Basket-style carriers are commonly employed to package beverage bottles. They normally include a central handle panel located between spaced parallel side panels, a bottom panel connected to the side panels and end panels connected to both the side panels and the handle panel. Dividers extending from the handle panel to the side panels are commonly included to provide individual cells for glass bottles, in order to prevent undue contact between adjacent bottles. Typically, basket-style carriers of this type are fabricated from collapsed carriers which have been formed from blanks. The carriers are loaded either by dropping bottles into place after the bottom panel has been formed or by moving an opened carrier over the bottles and then forming the bottom panel. Packaging machines designed to load and form the finished basket carrier package are employed to rapidly carry out these operations.
Basket carriers are strong and easy to carry, and they add an overall impression of quality to the product. In some cases, however, it is desirable to package beverage bottles in substantially enclosed carriers, which provide even greater product security. This means that a packager must have a different specialized packaging machine designed to handle a different type of carrier, usually a sleeve-type enclosed carrier. This is not only an inconvenience, but it is also quite expensive to provide two separate machines. It would be much more convenient, and more economical, to be able to use the same machine to package bottles in either an enclosed or open-top basket-style carrier.
An object of the invention, therefore, is to provide an enclosed basket carrier which can be packaged on the same machine used to package conventional open basket carriers. The carrier must possess adequate strength and rigidity, and should also present a pleasing design appearance basically similar to the appearance of conventional basket carriers.